Microbial Cross-Feeding in Water and Resource Recovery Facilities

Microbial cross-feeding leads to complex and interconnected elemental cycling but we need an improved understanding of how cross-feeding influences overall community function and how changes in substrates perturb these relationships. Our lab applies novel laboratory and modeling approaches to better understand cross-feeding relationships in engineered systems.

Nitrogen Cycling in the Urban Water Cycle

Our understanding of which microbes are involved in nitrogen cycling and how they are functioning is rapidly changing. Our lab seeks ways to control microbial communities to improve the sustainability of the nitrogen cycle during treatment.

Biofilms in the Urban Water Cycle

As water conservation grows in urban environments, high rate treatment (i.e. higher biomass concentrations) such as biofilm reactors will become critical. Biofilm reactors are space efficient and often more energy efficient then suspended culture systems. Therefore, we want to understand how biofilm communities form and how we can control their formation to establish desirable microbial communities and thus more efficient systems. This involves both modeling and laboratory approaches.